


we find our way, in the dark

by Trojie



Series: Any time you want [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Pre-Series, Stanford Era, Voyeur Dean, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:12:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean stalks Sam, and Sam pretends he doesn't notice. And then Dad goes on a hunting trip. You know the rest of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we find our way, in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Angst. Infidelity. Voyeurism. Incest. Canonical character death (of Jessica Moore). Title from 'Summertime' by My Chemical Romance. First draft beta-read by the lovely nu_breed - errors introduced in subsequent rewrites are entirely my own fault!

Sam doesn't "leave home" because he never had a home to leave, not the way other people have homes, like a house _and_ a family _and_ ... whatever else it is people have. But he does leave. He leaves his dad because his dad tells him not to come back. He leaves an old run-down house but only because that's where they were squatting when the shitstorm went down. He's not planning on going back to either. 

And Sam leaves the life - hunting evil, killing monsters, saving people - because it was never his life in the first place. 

Sam also leaves his brother, in that he walks and Dean stays behind. He leaves Dean, but then Dean catches back up, like they're connected by elastic and they pulled too far, so far that when Dean finds him on the side of the road they snap back skin-on-skin, they fuck in the back of the car Sam grew up in, and it's frantic like they'd been apart years instead of hours. 

Sam pleads for it and Dean gives in - Sam takes and Dean lets him. Sam says _you gotta give me this_ and Dean does but he makes sure they use protection, because he taught Sam trigger-discipline and saltlines and holy water so of course he feels like he has to show him that too. And Sam sneaks out after, while Dean's sleeping, eases the Impala's door closed quiet because he knows how to finesse that hinge so it doesn't squeak, knows how to move so Dean doesn't wake, has done since he was small. So maybe Sam _does_ leave home after all. 

He hefts his duffle over his shoulder and walks away.

His step hitches all the time while he's walking, muscles he's never used like _that_ before stretching uncomfortably, but he has to keep walking because he's damned if he'll let Dean pick him up again. He gets picked up instead by a trucker maybe five miles down the road from where Dean pulled the Impala over, gets in the front seat and fends off questions and his ass is warm and bruised and he keeps thinking about how much further away he could possibly run. 

He refuses to shrink into his seat when the Impala roars past, but he does tense, and that doesn't help him not think about the fact that he fucked his brother in the back seat of that car last night. Or that it was good, and it hurt, and he'd never done it before and he wants to do it again, and he should never have done it in the first place and that hurts most.

The trucker whistles though, points at his brother's baby as she speeds past. 'That's a cherry ride, huh?' he says admiringly.

'Yeah,' says Sam, licking his lips and watching her disappear into the horizon, and pretending it doesn't ache.

***

Dean's not even surprised when he wakes up and Sam's gone. 

He throws away the takeout bag with the condom in it at the next town. There's no sign of Sam on the road. Dean just keeps driving, picks up a salt 'n burn case two days later that should have been a piece of pie and nearly gets himself killed not watching his own six. Gets slammed into a gravestone and he has to get up and crawl back to the grave to drop a matchbook in it and even then the ghost gets in a few more punches before he finally manages to toast its ass. He feels off-balance, turned around, upside down without Sam. He feels naked without Sam.

Dad doesn't call for a week, and when he does he sounds rough. He doesn't want to join up when Dean suggests it. Well, fuck him. Dean kills a black dog in Colorado, a ghoul in Michigan, five ghosts in a row in bumfuck-nowhere towns he doesn't even bother remembering the names of - they're just coordinates Dad sends him. They're just targets. Dean does what he's always done. Dean does what he's told.

Dean has a threeway in Reno and leaves afterwards to haul ass for another case. Dean gets into a bar fight in Arkansas and spits blood out the Impala's rolled-down window into the dirt on his way out of town. Dad calls Dean and gives him more coordinates, more work. Dean doesn't call his brother.

Dean does the job.

***

Stanford's like looking-glass world. Sam buys, uses, and eventually even washes his own bedsheets. He goes to a barber when his hair needs cutting. He doesn't have to hide his classwork in a stack of photocopies of newspaper clippings. He stops _collecting_ newspaper clippings, for a while at least and then he starts again and feels guilty about the fact that it makes him feel safer. 

Someone asks him what he does and he gives an honest answer - he's a student. He fills out forms with his own name. He plays pool for fun instead of money. It's fucking weird. 

He makes friends. His roommate is called Brady, and Sam's used to living in a tiny room with someone else all up in his business so he just settles in. Brady seems like a good guy. After a few months, they're basically inseparable. Brady's pre-med and Sam's pre-law, so they turn their room into the kind of nerd lair Dean would have utterly hated, and work their asses off. Sam's in heaven, this is the life he's always wanted, but he keeps a knife under his pillow anyway. It helps him sleep.

Every time his phone rings, for months, his heart's kind of in his mouth but it's never Dad calling and it's never Dean calling either. No unknown numbers. Just people he met after he walked. 

The pressure of pre-med eventually gets to Brady. He's got a lot of family expectations riding on him, tight deadlines and fees to pay and stress, just fucking stress all over the place, and after their first summer break he comes back different. Sam tries to pretend everything's normal but he fucking knows what it means when someone stays out late and comes back smelling of smoke and perfume and cologne, and he finds very-nearly empty bottles stashed in weird places. He confronts Brady about it, and Brady breaks down. They talk it over and Sam tells Brady he'll help him, he'll do whatever he can. 

For a while it's like trying to climb out of a gravity well, but eventually things do get better. Brady gets back to studying more, and almost in return Sam goes to more parties than he used to. 

At one of them, Brady introduces Sam to a girl.

***

Dean fucks and fights and kills and the passenger seat of the Impala feels so empty it might swallow him whole. He drives too long at night, and he tells himself the blacktop is all the company he needs but it isn't true. He tells himself that Dad is all the partner he needs but it isn't true. He fetches up at a New Orleans crossroads one night at a quarter past midnight, too sacked out to keep driving and too wired to sleep, fumbles a half-finished fifth out of the glovebox and watches the bourbon crawl honey-gold up the sides of the bottle, and he tells himself that this is for Sam's own good. That isn't true either.

Just because Sam _wants_ something doesn't mean it's good for him to have it. It's been a year and a half, Dean realises, swallowing the last of the bourbon down, since the last time he saw his brother. A year and a fucking half. 

***

'This is Sam,' Brady says, hanging on Sam's shoulder and beaming at the girl, this amazing, beautiful, tall, blonde - Sam's mouth is dry and his tongue feels about a mile thick and he knows, he just knows, he's gonna bomb. He watched his brother pick up chicks in half a hundred different ways and he learnt absolutely nothing. 'And this, Sam, is Jess.'

'Pleased to meet you,' Jess says, swapping her cup over and holding her hand out to shake. 'How do you know Brady?'

'Oh, Sam and I are roommates,' Brady says. Sam watches Jess's slim hand disappear in his own, suddenly clumsy, massive one. After a few moments he realises he should let go. 'He's pre-law, he doesn't get out much. I took pity and dragged him out tonight for some fun. I figure he deserves some, right sport?'

'Hi,' says Sam to Jess, and he's pretty sure he's blushing hot enough to fry an egg on. 

Her nose crinkles when she smiles at him, and that's all she wrote. 

Jess and Sam move in together after about two months. 

Their apartment is shitty but it's theirs. The salt lives in the pantry. Sam sneaks off to a firing range once a week. They talk wistfully about getting a puppy, but the lease won't allow it. Sam has bad dreams, but they're just dreams. Jess is smart and feisty and never quite lets Sam have the upper hand. After a fortnight living together, he experiments with saying he loves her, and she says it back without even hesitating. 

He tells himself this is what he always wanted. 

***

Dean finishes up a case, can't find a motel, curls up in the back seat of his baby.

It's like being held. He's thought that before but he's never thought it so often ever before as he has done the last few months. He shoves himself back into the L shape between the seat and the back and he's being cradled, like someone - _something_ , let's face it - thinks he's worth protecting, loving … even just having around. Something wants him. 

He's really gotta stop fucking drinking on his own so much, he hates getting maudlin. Then again, who exactly does he have to drink with any more? He's just got a phone number he doesn't dare call even if it hasn't been disconnected, and another one that calls him all the time and gives him coordinates and instructions and occasional, grudging praise. He did see Dad last week, it's true, but it was more like a goddamn strategy meeting than any kind of family thing. They spent most of it packing shotgun shells full of salt - Dad's latest bright idea - in silence.

Dean stares at his hip flask, shining dully in the light through the window, and knows he should put it away, but doesn't, takes another pull instead. The bourbon stopped stinging the back of his throat sometime, he doesn't know when. Maybe about the same time girls stopped being very interesting because no-one was watching him pick them up or bring them home, or maybe more like when he stopped caring about the bruises he was picking up because he didn't have anyone to bite their flat-line lip in anger while they patched him up. 

He lays his palm flat over his crotch more out of habit than anything else, but now he's thinking about that face, stubborn and too-pretty and promising to grow up into something Dean can't even picture. The man his baby brother's gonna be, Dean can't visualise. Just knows he's gonna be hot-headed and hot-blooded and too big for Dean to push around any more. Dean rolls over til his face is pressed into his baby's upholstery and slides his hand into his jeans. 

God, he misses Sam so much. Is it sick that Dean gets hard thinking about him, or is it sicker that he only lets himself think about him, really think about him, when he's getting hard? He fucked Sam here in this back seat - let's face it, that's the really sick part. His fingers wrapped around his cock, remembering, trying to fake the sensation of Sam's slick, tight ass clenching, that's just collateral damage.

It's not the first time Dean's come on his own, in his car. But this time he rolls back over and looks up, and he can see himself in the rearview mirror and it is not a pretty sight. He looks wrecked, ruined. Broken. The familiar landscape of car around him just shows up the empty space, the missing parts of him.

Fuck, he is too fucking drunk for this.

Dad calls while Dean's sleeping it off, and Dean doesn't call back, for the first time in his life. 

Instead, Dean drives to Palo Alto.

***

Sam picks up that someone's following them about a minute after he and Jess and Brady leave the bar. 

It takes about five seconds more for him to work out it's Dean, and that should make him relax, but it doesn't. For a start, why the fuck is Dean in Palo Alto? Sam doesn't need to be checked up on. He's not a little kid. 

And for another thing, just because it's Dean doesn't mean it's _Dean._ There's a whole bunch of shit that could be wearing his face. And Sam's only carrying a plain steel knife, a flask of holy water, and a snaplock bag of salt, and his handgun is loaded with standard rounds. He's got a selection of other ammunition at home (Jess calls the box his porn stash, half-joking, but she respects his need for privacy over it. He doesn't care what she calls it as long as she doesn't look), but at home is not here, where he might need it.

Dean's on Sam's six, out of sight unless Sam wants to be really friggin' obvious, but Sam can _hear_ him, the tiny out-of-place noises of someone being too quiet, and he half-wishes he was actually drunk so he wouldn't feel so hyperaware and twitchy about it. He doesn't need to see, he knows. Knows Dean's walk, Dean's non-sounds, the way he puts his feet down to minimise his footsteps, the way the streetlights will be putting fire in his eyes and warming the worn-shiny creases in his stupid leather jacket. _Everything._ Like it's been no time at all.

 _Fuck off, Dean,_ Sam growls in the privacy of his head, but Dean can't actually read his mind.

That too-familiar quiet step behind him is still following even at the end of the street, when Brady tries to tug Sam and Jess back down towards the lit-up bar signs and Friday-night noise. Sam abruptly wants to snap at him to shut up, stop moving, let Sam _think_. Like his best friend is just some idiot civilian. Sam hasn't been this on-edge in a long time, tasting something like salt in the back of his throat. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't let himself look around too much, tries not to act too twitchy, because Brady's kinda wasted but Sam doesn't think Jess has had enough that she won't pick up that something's off if he acts weird. 

'C'mon, Sam,' Brady wheedles. 'One more bar, dude, I swear. Just one more. One for the road.'

'I think you've had enough,' Sam tells him, changing direction for home instead, taking the other fork of the intersection, pulling both Brady and Jess with him. 'And I'm beat. C'mon, you can sleep it off on our couch.'

Jess smiles warmly up at him and then across at their friend. 'He's right,' she tells Brady. 'You've had way too much, dude, c'mon. That pissy roommate's probably locked the door on you. Come back with us. I'm making breakfast in the morning,' she says, which ought to be persuasive enough for any drunk who's had her pancakes before. It's just another Friday night, except that Sam can still feel eyes on him. He picks up his pace, and tugs the other two along with him. They're not far from home. He needs to get inside, then he won't feel this itch to act, won't break his own cover.

If that's Dean, good fucking luck to him. He wants to spy on Sam, Sam can't stop him. But he's not going to give Dean the satisfaction of thinking Sam's still, in any way, in the life. So he doesn't draw. Doesn't even twitch his hands towards the small of his back. But he's ready. He doesn't hunt any more but he's not dumb, and he's not going to be vulnerable. 

The first thing he did when he got to Stanford - the last thing he did that was illegal - was forge a concealed-carry permit, just in case, and he still runs in the morning and keeps himself fit, also just in case. It's not like normal people don't get jumped by monsters, and now he does things like going out to bars with his friends - now he _has_ friends - and they get wasted, and wasted college students are 100% the kind of easy prey a lot of monsters like. So Sam has to be ready. 

But he's not actually _hunting_. He swore he wouldn't any more. The folder at home in the 'porn' box full of newspaper clippings, the ones that talk about mysterious deaths, it's just … insurance. In case something comes knocking and he needs intel, patterns, to unravel whatever happens. He's not naive enough to think nothing's ever gonna happen. Just because he's not hunting doesn't mean he's not going to see things, hear things, get jumped coincidentally in alleyways by things, y'know?

He realises he's basically compiling the argument for his defence like Dean's already interrogating him, and scowls.

As they get to the door, Jess fumbles out her keys and opens the place up and basically pushes Brady inside, and Sam tenses. The uneventful walk meant nothing - this is the moment when he finds out which way this is gonna go, if the shape in the shadows is gonna pounce. His fingers twitch. If it's Dean, they're safe. But if that's _not_ Dean, if it's just something wearing Dean's face, it's not even gonna know what's hit it.

Sam doesn't hunt any more. That doesn't mean he can't deal with things if he has to. 

But there's not even a rustle from the bushes. Sam waits a good long moment, and nothing, nada, so he locks the door behind him and takes the stairs up to the apartment two at a time, fight-or-flight transmuted suddenly into something else, a different kind of itch to scratch. In the living room, Brady's already pretty much sacked out, faceplanting the sofa, and Jess is just disappearing into their bedroom, flash of an ankle and swirl of blonde hair catching Sam's attention, so he keeps moving, follows her intently.

'Hey,' she says warmly, turning around as he shuts the door behind himself, and he just _wants_ , too intensely and with more bitterness to it than he's comfortable with, things stirred up he's been trying to put behind him, but she laughs into his neck when he sweeps her up, when his kisses have sharper teeth than they should, and Jesus, she is far, far too good for him. He's practically pushing her onto the bed, but she's pulling him along with her - he's pulling her clothes off and he doesn't care about whether or not they're going to survive the process, but she's yanking his off just as hard. 

She says words but all he can hear is Dean's voice, and he realises he's been hot and bothered since they left the bar, and there never was an itch that wasn't this one, and God, God, he's so fucked up. This isn't what he wanted. He's sprawled across the bed with the woman of his dreams, so how come all he can smell is hot metal and old leather?

He eats Jess out, spreads her knees around his shoulders and works her and works her and works her with his tongue until she's yanking on his hair, making everything taste hotter and sweeter as he fights her for just one more lick, one more taste - nothing like Dean, unmistakably, perfectly her and he's so hungry for the difference that it scares him. Fuck, he knows he should slow down and take this easier - she's a little bit buzzed, she probably just wanted to make out and get off lazily and go to sleep, but she's groaning and rocking into his mouth even as she's trying to pull him off of where she's sensitive, and it's addicting.

Just one more slide of the flat of his tongue up along where she's wet and she bucks, shakes and the fist she has twisted in his hair tightens until it's true pain, fiery and dick-twitching. He rears up and over her body until he can kiss her mouth again, and her hands land on his ass, her fingers dig in, so fucking close and so far away from where he suddenly wants them, where he's wanted them all along, since the footsteps and the feeling of being watched. Since Dean, fucking hiding when he has to know Sam would see him, _sense_ him, walking like a hunter, quiet breathing and butter-soft leather under orange streetlights, fucking _spy_ , fucking self-righteous prick come to throw Sam out of this life he's building for himself -

'Sam, _Sam,_ fuck,' Jess pants, too loud given they've got a guest and Sam doesn't care, buries his teeth in her shoulder and sucks a ferocious, possessive bruise there where her little summer tank-tops won't hide it. 'Oh, fuck, yes,' she growls, clamping her knees around his hips. 'Fuck me, Sam, Jesus -'

No condoms, no barriers - Sam fucking loves monogamy and the Pill, and _Jess_ , and he buries himself in her, clutches at her like he can imitate the way she's clutching at him, rolls them over and looks up, the yellow bulb of their bedroom light giving her a halo and outside, behind her, the still-open curtains, the dark, the movement in the pathetic excuse for a garden that screams _watched_ and _back-up_ and _safe_ and _I got you, Sammy_ \- and that's when Sam comes, thumbing Jess's nipples and shuddering, angry and warm and loved and full of foreboding all at once. 

Jess whimpers, too far gone to say anything but he knows he hasn't got her there yet, hasn't paid his dues, hasn't finished the job, so he hauls her up over his face and licks her clit, tasting himself on her, until she's hanging onto the headboard and his face is wet enough that it might just be enough to pretend it's just from the sex, and she's coming, coming all over him.

He lays her down and wipes his face, gets up to walk over to the ranch-slider, meaning to close the curtains. The darkness is still now, but they're still being watched. Sam takes a moment, two, knows he's framed like a porno, freshly-fucked, and doesn't care. _Take a good look,_ he thinks harshly, and leaves the curtains. Fuck it. Let him see, if he's looking. 

'Wow, what's gotten into you?' Jess asks, when he turns around, one arm sprawled over her eyes, her hair messed up over the pillow, the sheets puddled around her, looking like a piece of goddamn Renaissance marble sculpture even in the ugly artificial light. 'Not that I'm complaining. Whew. I won't need a goddamn workout tomorrow morning, that's for sure,' she laughs.

Sam sits down on the edge of the bed. 'Nothing,' he says, knows he sounds defensive and unable to find the right lie to explain it. 'Just … I dunno, I guess I needed to blow off a little steam.'

'So very much not complaining,' Jess says. 'C'mere.' She pulls him back into the bed. She's the big spoon, nominally, but it's too hot in here for actual cuddling, so Sam's basically hanging off the edge of the bed, trying to keep his arms and legs cool, Jess's hand on his waist like she's just reassuring herself that he's still here as she drops off. Her touch soothes him. 

But the moonlight catches the metal of Sam's gun on the bedside table, and outside, there's movement again. 

Sam doesn't sleep for hours, and when he does Jess is burning and Dean's dragging him away.

***

It should be harder to find one twenty-something college student in a town full of twenty-something college students. This should be a needle-in-a-haystack gig. But Dean finds Sam like a compass finds north, all messy stuttering sweeps that feel aimless until they home in tight and you realise the metal knew the way all along. Dean's walking along wondering where he's gonna start and then Sam steps out of a bar and suddenly everything's aligned.

Sam looks good. He's with another guy (who has his arm slung around Sam's ... not quite shoulders, true, but he's trying, and that friendly gesture makes Dean's hackles rise more than it should) and a tall blonde girl. So at least Sam's doing safety in numbers. The three of them swing along a path away from Dean's lurking spot and Dean makes the print of something he'd bet is Sam's battered Taurus in his waistband, so that's another worry kind of dealt with. Sam's alert and he's armed, even on a Friday night.

Dean sees Sam's micro-flinch at noises, following the trio wherever they're going through campus at night. He sees the way Sam's always checking his ten and his two over his friends' heads. They're kind of trashed maybe, definitely had enough booze to be giggly and silly and floppy, but Sammy's not. He's on point and he knows he's being followed, and he doesn't like it. 

Dean refuses to feel bad for making his brother twitchy. Sam's out and about in a public space. Dean can watch him all he likes. He wonders if Sam will confront him, but he thinks he probably won't. Sam's always been more of a lay-in-wait kind of a dude, he'll ambush you when you're not expecting him, knife you when your guard's down, but he won't fight you in the open.

Dean doesn't want to get caught by Sam doing a last scan of the road before closing the door, so he stays back, even though he wants to check out things like, that shadow under Sam's collarbone, is that a hickey or a bruise? Does he still have bags under his eyes the way he did the last few months before he ran off? But getting close enough to know the answers to those questions would mean getting close enough for Sam to pounce, so Dean melts away into the shadows when the girl pulls out her keys and pulls the drunk dude into the building she opened up, and just watches as Sam hangs back and checks everything, just like Dean knew he would. 

(Dean squints and decides it's probably a hickey, wonders whether it was the blonde chick or the drunk dude that put it there.)

His cell rings after lights have clicked on in the apartment. It's Dad, calling him back north because he needs backup, finally, for the first time in months. And Dean's okay with going, because from what he can tell, Sam's okay here at Stanford. Dad kind of angles to know how long it'll take Dean to reach him, i.e., where is he?

Dean doesn't say Palo Alto. He doesn't even say California. Dad wouldn't understand. Frankly sometimes Dean isn't sure Dad deserves to know anything about Sam any more. Maybe Dean doesn't either, but he came down here because he just had to check, and he's not done yet. He puts Dad off with something about seeing him tomorrow night. He's gonna have to drive like fury and probably piss in a bottle a couple times to make it on that deadline, but if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

In the window, Sam's pulling his shirt off, and the girl's, and _whoa,_ okay, a little grabby-hands there, Sammy, Dean thinks, but he can't fault his baby brother on one thing, which is that his pushy attitude seems to be working wonders for his lady friend. If you'd asked him a moment ago, Dean woulda been honour-bound as a big brother to announce that this chick was ten times more woman than Sam could possibly know how to handle, but yeah, no, actually Sam's got some moves. And possibly an oral fixation.

It stops being even the most warped kind of sibling pride, watching his baby brother have sex and cheering him on, it stops being okay, when Dean's touching himself through his jeans, not even looking at the chick, just drinking in Sam, Sam and the flex of his back and the way he ruts into having his ass grabbed, the way he fucks like a steam-engine, and wanting it. That. Wanting _Sam_ again the way he never should have wanted him in the first place. 

The girl's hands clench on Sam's ass and Dean half-wonders if she'll slip Sam a finger or two, if she knows that much, but she doesn't and Sam just ups his tempo and the headboard of the bed starts to judder into the wall. Dean squeezes himself with a sudden weird kind of anger-jealousy-protectiveness- _smugness_ , because that's someone else Sam's screwing and they're not doing it right, and they should be doing it right but fuck it, no-one knows Sam the way Dean knows him and that's just the way it is. The fact that this girl doesn't seem to read Sam well enough to give him something he wants even if he's trying to hide it is a crying shame and relief all at once to Dean. But it's her in there with Sam, not him, and maybe Sam doesn't wanna be read, not like that, like Dean could. Maybe that's the point.

Dean forces himself to take his hand off his dick, because what gives him the fucking right?

Sam rolls himself and the girl over and all Dean can see of him now are his feet at the edge of the mattress as he flexes up, his knees either side of the girl's waist. Dean's seen a hundred girls' naked backs, mops of blonde hair; she's damn near a perfect ten but Sam's shins are scarred and his toes are clenching in the sheets and that's all Dean's interested in.

He stands there and watches til it's done, and he's gonna walk away as soon as he knows Sam is sleeping. It won't kill the urge - he knows enough about urges and about killing too to know that - but it's a line he can draw. 

But then Sam comes to the glass door that opens onto the tiny excuse for a balcony that probably put the rent up an extra ten dollars, stark naked, and Dean was never good at lines. Dean looks up at his baby brother and his hand is back on his fly before he knows what he's doing, just _Jesus fuck_ putting pressure on like trying to stop an arterial bleed and just as fucking futile. Sam's face is just how Dean remembers - a pinched half-frown, mouth a straight hard line and lips bitten-kissed- _used_ to redness, and something hotly defiant in his eyes. Half-fight, half-fuck, all Sam, and Dean creams his jeans like a thirteen year old over just the sight of him. 

He should leave, after that. But Sam leaves the goddamn curtains open and it's like an invitation to stay and watch him, make sure he's okay. Dad can wait, anyhow. Palo Alto doesn't feel that dangerous but what the hell, there could be all kinds of nasty things lurking out here in the dark. 

Dean oughtta know. 

***

The next morning Sam skips his torts lecture and spends a couple of hours in the dirty little shooting range he likes. It's far enough off campus that he has to take a bus to get there, and the fat, balding guy in the sweaty wifebeater who laughed at him the first time he showed up just lets him in now, no fuss, but acting cagey like he thinks Sam's a dangerous psychopath or something.

Sam doesn't see what his problem is. Lots of kids have guns. Lots of kids practice with them. Lots of kids are from paranoid families. Jess carries Mace because her dad basically refused to let her out of the house if she didn't take it. She laughs about it but she still keeps it in her purse. Sam holds his head up high and refuses to be ashamed. He's got the permit, he's carrying the weapon legally (-ish, but it's a good forgery), and _his_ dad refused to let him out of the house, metaphorically-speaking, if he couldn't be trusted with a weapon.

And Sam hates basically everything his dad stands for but this is important. He just has to make sure, that's all. Make sure he still could, if he had to. 

'Naughty naughty, Sam, cutting class like that,' says Brady when he shows up for their usual lunch. How Brady knows, given they're not in the same classes, Sam doesn't care. Brady always knows shit like that. 

'I had a thing,' Sam says, shrugging. 'No big deal.'

Brady gives him a look. Sam wonders if maybe Brady thinks he's cheating on Jess, and feels a little cold inside because he's _not_ and he wouldn't ever. Not ever, no matter what. 

'A thing,' Brady repeats.

'Shut up,' Sam says. 'Yeah, a thing. And no, I'm not gonna tell you what, because if I do then I lose all the element of surprise.' Brady's birthday is coming up. It's an acceptable excuse for a secret, right?

Brady doesn't look convinced. 

***

Dean doesn't think about how _easy_ it is to just swing by Palo Alto every so often, how this could totally have been no big deal, because thinking about that just makes him so fucking angry he doesn't know how to deal with it. He still only sees Dad maybe once every month or so, although he gets phonecalls pretty much every night, and he makes sure he's always got casework to talk about so that Dad doesn't notice that he's not always actually _on_ a case. 

He doesn't go back to Sam's apartment. That's too much like doing this for his own sick reasons. No. He sticks to daylight, campus, between classes, glimpses of Sam over other people's heads and around their backpacks and through their car windows. A lot of the time Sam's with that blonde chick, and they are definitely a couple. 

Dean watches Sam steal a kiss from her outside a lecture hall. She lets him catch her, although she fakes a dodge to make him hip-check her back into line (Dean's used that move, both those moves, actually) and Sammy dimples right up like he used to when he was tiny. His sweet, sweet smile makes Dean's heart clench. 

Both of Sam's hands, huge and gentle, cup the girl's face, and he presses their mouths together and just like the smile, it's sweet. 

She smacks him on the ass when he turns to go into class, though, and then the sugar in Sam turns into something else and Dean has to turn away and not look any more. He doesn't want to see. He'd wanted that girl to be a one-night stand, and she isn't, and Sam looks so fucking happy when Dean looks back at him that Dean hates himself like burning, because he should be happy that Sam's happy, and he's not.

***

The quiet movement on Sam's six comes back, sometimes twice in a week, sometimes not for months, but it comes back and it comes back and it comes back, every time Sam thinks it's gone. If it's Dean, Sam thinks, why doesn't he make contact? And if it isn't Dean, why doesn't it fucking pounce? 

The dreams get worse, probably because he's so twitchy. Jess dies and dies and dies over and over every night, and Sam's hyperawareness of being followed hits Defcon One and stays there, constant active-hunting levels of paranoia, and it's exhausting.

The third time Sam feels eyes on the back of his neck, he loads his gun with silver rounds and takes a tour of every nasty little alleyway he can find. The watching thing keeps pace, but it doesn't engage. It also doesn't ever give him a clean shot. 

Sam tastes blood in the back of his throat in the mornings when he wakes up, and starts to dread going to sleep. He pulls a few all-nighters pleading important study but it's harder to do when you're sharing a bed with someone who'd rather you were there, even if you do wake them up panting and sobbing and cold with sweat one night in every three.

The sixth time Dean-or-not-Dean starts breathing down Sam's neck again, he's tired enough to be dumb and reckless. He leaves his gun at home, trusts in the knife in his boot, and has a couple of drinks. That ought to be enough to seem vulnerable enough to either get attacked or get Dean to give in and come lecture him about safety, surely, but it doesn't work like that. Sam stumbles home drunk and unharmed and sleeps on the couch rather than wake Jess. The hungover explanations aren't fun.

The tenth time, it's during daylight and Sam actually catches a glimpse, not full-face but enough to make those big eyes, that soft mouth all pulled hard and tight to look older, Sam's big brother sloping through campus looking like a wolf that didn't bother with sheep's clothing amongst all the students. He doesn't exactly fit in. Sam jerks his face away, eyes down, before they can make eye-contact and he's blown, but it screws him up for the rest of the day, he can't concentrate on case law or his art history class or anything but that split-second rush of relief and endorphins and resentment all at once that says _Dean's here._

If it _is_ Dean, he tells himself. And anyway, what does it matter? It doesn't change anything. He locks himself in the library restroom and bites his wrist to keep himself quiet, leans against the stall door and jerks off until he's raw and sore and used up and guilty, not even sure what he's angry about any more except maybe himself and the electric spike up his spine, like a lightning rod tuned to the idea of Dean.

He left and he still can't get away.

It's a Wednesday night, maybe two nights after that, and Sam's at home with Jess, studying, curled up with their laptops and books, when Jess kind of half-clears her throat and says, 'Sam … you're okay, right?'

Sam looks up. 'Yeah,' he says, which is autopilot but it's also true. 'Why?'

Jess makes a little face, kind of awkward and worried. 'I dunno,' she says. 'You've been out late a few times, you're kind of cagey when I ask you why … Brady swears you haven't been going out with him, and he says he's worried too. You'd tell me, right, if something was up?'

'Of course,' Sam says. 'God, of course I would.' He puts the laptop down and shifts over the couch til he's sitting next to her. 'I swear, there's nothing going on. I just get … I dunno, restless? Being in the same place all the time, it's weird for me, y'know? I just .. I walk, I guess. Go to the shooting range, try to give my brain a break from all this crappy schoolwork.' The justifications, the things that aren't lies but aren't exactly the truth either, just roll out of him, easy as pie, smooth as silk. Jess's mouth twists a little like there's a question she wants to ask and isn't going to, and he can guess what it is. She thinks there's another girl. As if there would _ever_ be another girl. 'Hey,' he says, trying to look her in the eyes. 'I won't do it anymore,' he says. 'If I'm worrying you, I'm sorry.' He really is. 'I'll stop staying out late.'

'I don't mean you have to be like, tied to my apron strings or anything,' Jess says, but a little of the tightness around her mouth and eyes is easing. 'Just … if you're gonna be late, let me know or something? Or if you wanna take walks, I could come with sometimes?'

Sam will be damned before he takes Jess on the kind of 'walks' he's been taking lately, like he'd ever let her anywhere near something so borderline to hunting, but what the hell. 'Sure,' he says. 'That'd be cool.'

Something clenches in his heart, though. He knows how this goes. You have good reasons, so you lie. You do something you have to, but you can't tell someone, so you lie. And you keep lying, because the only way out is through, and it all ends when you've got nothing left to lie about because you've got no-one left to lie to. Sam's seen it happen. He knows what he's doing. 

But he can't stop.

He can't stop because his dreams are dark and hot and make him panic when he wakes until he can find Jess's hand or shoulder or hair or something else to reassure him she's still there with him. He can't stop because the body that pulls him from the dream-fire smells of leather and bourbon and gunpowder and that's the same scent that's been chasing him through campus, the same scent that gets him half-hard just remembering it.

He can't tell Jess and he can't stop being afraid. So he does things and then he lies about them, but he knows what he's doing, knows the road he's going down. It'll be okay. He just has to keep running, keep his eyes open, and he can make sure he doesn't take the wrong path, and the past won't be able to catch up, either. 

***

Dean's in New Orleans, chasing down a voodoo priest with a bodycount higher than Dean's ever seen a human rack up before, when Dad stops calling. And it's not like it was just that he's busy one night and just doesn't call - that's happened, although it's not frequent, but this is different. Straight off, Dean feels weird about it, and he frets, but leaves it. Maybe Dad's got good reason. Maybe he's hiding out somewhere, or he's undercover, and Dean calling him to ask why he hasn't been checked up on would blow his cover. So Dean leaves it alone.

One night without Dad's whiskey-ruined voice in his ear, Dean could maybe put down to circumstances getting in the way. Two nights is half a relief, half the root of a gnawing worry. But three nights, three nights is definitely abnormal, and Dean breaks, and calls Dad's cell. Undercover can get fucked. 

Dean winds himself in knots dialing the number, and then waiting, and then _the number you're calling has been disconnected,_ the computer lady says, and Dean hurls his phone at the wall. Stupid plasticky thing bounces, which doesn't make him feel any better but at least means he doesn't have to buy another goddamn phone.

He knows the last place his dad was headed was California, little piece of nowhere called Jericho, and he'd been terrified for a second, when Dad had told him that, that he'd have to confess he was close enough to maybe help out. But Dad just gave him the low-down on the voodoo thing, gave him his orders, and didn't even ask, and Dean took it for a gift and ran. 

There's no way Dad would let his phone go out of commission without picking up a new one and calling Dean. There's no way. Being able to contact each other is basically the only safety-net either of them has any more, since Dad fell out with Bobby Singer and whatever it was that happened with Pastor Jim happened. Dad's got no-one but Dean to turn to, not that he ever does, and Dean's got no-one but Dad. So Dad's phone not working is nothing but a world of bad news. 

Dean finishes up the voodoo case with the help of a local cop who got caught in the crossfire, ducks the issue of 'how _ever_ -can-I-thank-you?' and books it for California, and either the road under his wheels is rougher than he remembers or his guts are churning more than they should or something, because he can't find that sweet spot of zoning out and just watching the miles flash by, where he sings along to whatever's in the cassette player without really knowing what he's singing, where he doesn't get the aches and pains of long-haul driving that everyone else seems to complain about, because this is where he's supposed to be, this is his place in the world. No, everything's turned around again, off-balance, just like after Sam left, and Dean knows one thing, for sure and certain.

He could do this without Sam, just about, because he still had Dad.

If he wants to find Dad, he's going to need Sam.

***

It's instinct, second nature, to lunge for the shadow in the dark kitchen, to see the punch coming and sway away, to kick - and every opening he leaves, because he should have practised this as well as the shooting, gets taken advantage of fast, but he still knows how to counter. Like riding a bike or falling off a log or casting a silver bullet, the things you never forget.

The mystery of the past year's solved when the attacker feints twice left and then slams into Sam's right, because the way he fights says _Dean_ in a way that the shape of his mouth and the colour of his eyes can't match.

Something in Sam must have known it was Dean, subconsciously, all along. Otherwise Dean'd have a hole in him right now. Something in Sam heard that noise, the distinctive little thud of person-versus-object in his own apartment when he can feel the sleeping presence beside him of the only other person who should be here, and picked up the baseball bat instead of the gun.

He only realises this when he's breathless under Dean in the dark of the kitchen, and his body wants to stay there forever.

Sam gets his breath and his balance back and slams Dean into the kitchen floor harder than he should after that, because it's either violence or frantically rubbing himself all over his brother, and he already knows they made enough noise that Jess has to be awake. The light flicks on _after_ they pull each other to their feet and Sam's never been more grateful in his entire life to not have to explain something. He still has to force himself to let go of Dean.

Dean isn't here for a social call. It's Dad. Of course it is. Like Sam ever wants anything to do with Dad again. Jess gives Sam a look that says he's gonna have some explaining to do later, and Sam doesn't like the feeling running up his spine when Dean and Jess are in the same room in the half-dark and Sam's brain is still half REM-cycling or whatever you call it - still half-dreaming and animal-scared of the concept of fire. 

Dean's as beautiful in wrought-iron shadows as Jess is under cheap yellow light. His mouth moves in ways Sam gets hypnotised by. Sam's not going to go with him. 

Dean does not say 'please, Sam,' at any point. He doesn't have to because Sam can read it all over him, smell it all over him. And Dean knows that, and he's probably counting on it. But Sam's future requires him to be here on Monday, and Sam's past made it pretty clear he wasn't welcome any more when it became his past in the first place. Sam'll listen, but he's not getting in that car. 

'I can't do this alone,' Dean says, and for once in his life Sam's not sure if Dean's lying or not. 

'Yes, you can,' Sam says back though, because it doesn't matter what Dean believes, it's the truth. Sam's not nine anymore and he doesn't need Dean to tell him Batman stories to get him through long nights with no Dad anymore, but let's face it if anyone's a fucking superhero, if anyone can do shit alone, it's Dean.

'Yeah, well, I don't want to,' Dean says, and looks away, instead of grinning the way he's supposed to, the way he used to, and Sam suddenly wonders, cold like a nail in his heart, what it was like being left behind with Dad and the life, and no brother. And for the first time he feels bad for going AWOL. 

It's not hunting if he just takes a look at the intel Dean has, just like it's not hunting for him to do target practice or collect newspaper clippings. Recognising EVP isn't hunting, either - crackpot TV mediums and people who paint their fingernails black are capable of spotting EVP. He's just helping, that's all.

'Y'know, in two years, I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing,' Dean says, looks Sam dead in the eye and says it, and it's on the tip of Sam's tongue to point out that actually, Dean's been the reason Sam's still sleeping with one eye open and his goddamn gun loaded, but … that means admitting he still thinks about all the things he left behind, all the things in the dark. It means admitting that maybe he thinks there's something to all the training. It means admitting that out here, out of the life, Sam's got no-one to watch his back for him, and that it itches at him like a wound, one that won't heal right. 

But Dean's got no-one watching his back either, and nowhere safe to hide.

Sam sighs. 'All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him.'

***

Sam kisses Jess goodbye, and gets in the Impala, and Dean feels the universe start spinning again. Jess watches them leave, and Dean watches her in the rearview, and tries to feel bad but doesn't exactly. He promised they'd only take the weekend. She'll get Sam back. Dean's only got a couple of days to have this again. So sue him, he's happy. He's allowed. 

Sam starts in on everything from the cassette tapes to Dean's attitude to the box of fake ID they never used to have before, when they were just Dad's backup, supposed to stay out of actual trouble, but it's only cos he has his own ideas now, brings new shit to the table, like Dean's got an actual partner to hunt with for the first time. 

Dean doesn't like how much time Sam spends on his phone. Or how he only has one phone. Or how he answers it with his real name all the time. It's not safe. Dean does like how much and how easily Sam smiles now, though. At the phone, yeah, but also at Dean's taste in music (he rolls his eyes, but when he thinks Dean's not looking he smiles), at Dean's jokes, at Dean in general. Like he's happy here.

The blacktop stretches on way past Jericho. Sam stretches like an octopus when he dozes off, and his twitching fingers brush Dean's knee, hand lying palm-up across the seat. Dean's baby welcomes Sam back like he never left, the worn, warm puddle of upholstery in the passenger's seat fits him better than his jeans and his baggy college boy hoodie, and in the rearview mirror the back seat looks tempting again. 

Sam's shirts ride up as he shifts in his sleep, show a warm sliver of soft-looking flat belly, dark fine hair pointing the way down. Dean keeps his hands on the wheel. 

Sam's got a girl now, Dean reminds himself as hard as he can. Got a girl waiting for him, someone who loves him, wants him, is _allowed_ to want him, wants to share the life he's always fought so hard to have. Back down the highway, Sam's got somewhere to be when this is all over. Somewhere not with Dean.

Even if they find Dad, it's not like he's gonna ride along shotgun. When they sort out whatever mess the sonofabitch has put himself in, the passenger seat's gonna be empty again. Dean sees a road sign pointing him to Jericho and wishes he could ignore it and just keep driving. 

***

Sam remembers what he loved about hunting, when pieces start falling into place, clicking like dominoes, like crossword clues until it makes sense. It's the same thing he gets out of arguing case-law in class, the same thing he gets out of digging into the meat of things for an essay - satisfaction and pride. And the way Dean looks at him, when they're on the same wavelength, and catching the Impala's keys one-handed and feeling her thrum under him and, God, just that feeling of purpose - 

\- but he also remembers what he hated about hunting. Dead-ends. Police getting in the way. Every single time he has to lie. And the civilians, the ones who know shit and hide it, who're half to blame but don't count as monsters, humans who they just have to hope learn to see the error of their ways, but probably never do. Like Joseph Welch.

Joseph Welch pisses Sam off more than anything. He just has this overwhelming urge to punch the guy. He had a wife he loved, he had children, he had a house and a life and all he had to do to hang on to it was live it, but he couldn't keep his hand out of the goddamn cookie jar, and now he's got a dead family and the ghost of his wife is slaughtering innocent men, not that he believes that. No. His wife was the most beautiful perfect woman who ever existed. She could do no evil and so by extension even if Joseph did something dumb, it's not _his_ fault he doesn't have a family any more, because not even his bad choices could drive Saint Constance to murder-suicide. No harm, no foul, just Joseph mourning his pedestal-mounted dead wife, and there are ten totally coincidental corpses littering the highway. 

It makes Sam angry that he can recognise this fucking fairytale for what it is at the age of twenty two and widowed Joseph Welch apparently hasn't worked it out yet. 

***

With Sam breathing softly in the bed across from him Dean doesn't need to get the fifth out of his duffle to help him sleep.

With Sam to crank-call 911, Dean doesn't need anything more than a paperclip to bust out of police custody.

With Sam to sweet-talk scared civilians and use some kind of freak college-boy internet skills, with Sam there to nut things out with him, Dean's pretty sure they could sew up most of the cases their Dad sends his way way quicker than Dad even realises is possible. He starts thinking, maybe they could make this work somehow. 

Dad's left them more coordinates in his journal. Another hunt. He's not here in Jericho, he's already moved on, and he wants Dean to follow, and Dean's eager to, as soon as they wrap this one up. He just needs to talk Sam around. It's gonna be hard, though. Dean did promise this would only take the weekend. He did promise Sam could go back. But this is important, he tells himself. Sam ought to see that. It's Dad. Family's more important than Sam's college-boy fake life.

Dean finds a phone booth.

 _'I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?'_ Sam asks, crackly across the booth's bad line, and then there's the sudden sound of brakes. 

'Sam? Sam! -'

_Take me home._

***

It's all wrong, Sam keeps thinking, his mind a blur while he's staring at the ghost, in the back seat and then in the front seat and then in his lap. This is all wrong. He doesn't fit the pattern. She can't attack him, he's not unfaithful. She's all over him like bog mist and he tells her, he gasps it out at her, that he's not unfaithful, says it like a prayer, a plea, an article of goddamn faith. She can't kill him, he's not unfaithful. He's never been unfaithful.

 _You will be,_ she tells him. She shivers in the shadow of his body and adds, _Just hold me._ But he knows even as she says it that she doesn't mean it, she doesn't want it for herself, it's just the bait in her trap. And she looks so cold, he's almost tempted, feels bad for her, all dead and freezing in her thin white dress. Can't help himself. Sam has always given Jess anything she wanted, anything it was in his power to give. 

But what _Constance_ wants is the first thing she asks for, the thing her unfaithful men never give her. 

_Take me home._

It's the oldest trick in the book. You give the dead what they ask for, and it destroys them.

Sam takes Constance Welch home.

***

'If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you,' says Dean to Sam, mostly to cover the sound of his heart trying to break his ribs. He badly wants to check Sam over for injuries but doesn't know if he can have his hands on his brother right now and keep it strictly business, so he runs his fingers over black paint and chrome instead and makes a mental list of the shit he's gonna have to do to get her pretty again - getting smashed through a building, even an old crappy one, is gonna take more than a bit of wax. He watches Sam out of the corner of his eye.

Sam looks okay, definitely riding the adrenaline, and the bitch was trying to _pull his heart out_ or some freaky crap, so his t-shirt is a goner, but he's not bleeding at least. He walks around the car and yanks the driver's door open. 'Want me to back her out of here so you can take a proper look?' he asks, and it's not just because he's probably never gonna trust Sam behind the wheel again that Dean shoves him out of the way. He makes damn sure to land an elbow in Sam's ribs, and there's no wince. Hopefully, no broken bones.

'Get out of there,' Dean growls. He ease his baby out of the crumbling mess Sam made of the house, and there's a few nasty graunching noises as bits of wood and metal catch and release under her belly, but she does come free okay and Sam saunters out after her and pulls the passenger door open and drops into the seat hard.

'Gently,' Dean tells him, unable to bite the word back.

'Jeez, it's just a goddamn car,' Sam mutters, putting his seatbelt on with a wince. Maybe a strained shoulder? Sore forearm?

Dean bites his tongue. He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other moving between stick-shift and the back of the seat, fingertips just occasionally touching Sam whenever Sam shifts. And out of the corner of his eye, as they pull away and back down to the highway, Dean sees Sam's fingers rub softly over the upholstery on the door every time they hit a bump or a piston misfires, a caress, like an apology.

*** 

Sam's chest hurts, five fingerprint burns it's gonna be hard to explain to Jess, but he can't stop the grin from spreading across his face as they burn rubber out of Jericho back to Palo Alto. He pokes the wound, wonders if it'll scar. Most of the injuries he got hunting as a kid didn't. Kids don't lay down scar tissue as easy. He's older now, though, and he might wear this one for the rest of his life. 

'Stop pickin' at it,' Dean says, batting Sam's hand away. 'Jeez, you never did learn to leave your boo-boos alone.'

'Shut up,' Sam retorts. 'Like you're such a stoic.'

'Whatever that means,' Dean drawls. 'Just more manly than you, s'all.' He reaches back across and ruffles Sam's hair. 'Aww, Sammy. Don't pout. One day -'

Sam knocks him away this time. 'One day nothing,' he says, and punches Dean in the shoulder.

'You little punk,' Dean growls, eyes lighting up. He flicks the indicator, pulls the car over onto the side of the road, dirt and gravel crunching under the Impala's wheels, and then he's on Sam like they're actually little enough to roughhouse inside a car again - Sam gets thumped into the join between the seat and the side of the car hard enough to jarr, still wearing his seatbelt where Dean's free, and his chest hurts. Dean lands on top of him and grins down, head pulled tight in so he doesn't crack his skull on the Impala's roof, and Sam's hit by a sudden wave of _deja vu_. They've been here before, crushed together in the dark on the hard shoulder of a bad decision.

Sam's breath rushes out of him, and it isn't all from the impact. He'd wanted it so bad he'd _fought_ for it, and he can't remember now why he thought he had to, because since when has Dean denied him anything? He'd been so sure Dean wanted it, too. And he'd been right, he knows he was right, he knows Dean still does want it, it's not like your read on someone just disappears overnight or even over a year or two. 

The smile drains off Dean's face as Sam stares up at him, leaves just that intensity that's always been Sam's sense-memory of him. Under all the dumb jokes and the pretty lies and the obedience and the don't-care attitude, Dean feels like focus, to Sam - and now he's the subject of it. On and off for a year now, Sam's felt that gaze, chafed under it, been ready for it to attack, but this isn't what he expected. He was braced for a punch, an argument, a fight - but here's Dean staring at him like he can get Sam naked with the power of his mind. 

In the back of his head Sam remembers Jess and thinks _I'm not unfaithful. I've never been._ In the back of his head Constance Welch just stares at him and says _you will be_. 

This was always a foregone conclusion.

Almost in slow motion, Dean leans down and brushes his mouth against Sam's, all gently parted lips and soft breath like he can't help himself. And Sam, God, fuck, Sam meets him halfway. Dean's got one hand fisted now in the burned holes in his t-shirt and doesn't look like he's planning on letting go anytime soon. 'God, Sammy,' he groans, pushing hard, lazy kiss after kiss onto Sam's mouth, cheekbones, earlobe, the soft spot under his jaw where his pulse pounds. 'Coulda lost you tonight. Don't you ever fuckin' do that again, y'hear me?'

Sam nearly dislocates his shoulder getting free of the seat belt so he can wrap his arm around Dean's waist. 'Do what?' he whispers, holding Dean harder against him. 'Oh _Jesus_ -' gets dragged out of him when Dean pushes down. This isn't like last time. This is like another first time, a different kind entirely; unexpected and hungry, but ready. 

'Hunt without me,' Dean growls. Sam's t-shirt is slowly ripping where Dean's clutching it. Sam's zipper is giving way where Dean's other hand is working it between their grinding hips. 'Go off without me, without backup, Sam.' He's got Sam's fly open now, working on his own, up on his knees, so Sam takes advantage of the space to yank his own jeans down. Their pace seems like molasses compared how Sam's heart is jackrabbiting in his chest, but it's an undertow kind of slow. This is gonna go the distance. 

Sam bites a mark, sucks a bruise onto the softest skin in the shadow of Dean's collarbone, drunk on adrenaline, knows he shouldn't be, knows that mark on someone else's white, pretty skin, knows a different hand around his dick, knows other fingers grabbing his ass tight, but he can't think. He just wants. Wants this, now, here, him. Dean. Like Joseph Welch, hand in the cookie jar, consequences can get fucked. 

Sam sinks down and spreads wide on the seat, practically hanging off it, toes his jeans to his ankles to get more space - 

\- Dean's sucking on his own fingers, porn in the half-dark tailor-made for Sam, scrabbling behind him in the glovebox, lube's cold, motorway lights are colder, fake-yellow somehow familiar like a halo around Dean's head that he's stolen off some other of Sam's memories. Sam's boots and Dean's knock together in the footwell. Dean's got his fingers in Sam's ass without even having to ask if this is how Sam wants it, because he knows. 

'Never hunted without you,' Sam grits through the burn of getting finger-fucked the way he's ached for. It's been two years. Sam's never asked for it, couldn't, didn't want to have to talk about it or talk about why or talk about if he'd done it before. Just wanted it. God, it feels so good to get it. 'Anyway. You're. You're not around. Dean. I gotta be able to look after myself.' He lets out a noise too deep to be a whimper, too soft to be a growl. 'You hunt without me,' he points out. Accuses.

'Had Dad,' Dean says, bitter with something Sam doesn't understand, pulling his fingers free. Too soon, Sam thinks, trying to rock back on them again. Too soon. 'Missed you, Sammy,' Dean mutters into Sam's ruined t-shirt, shifting his hips between Sam's thighs, trying to find the right angle to - 

\- Dean's big and blunt and he forces his way in and Sam doesn't know how to do anything else but welcome him. Sam's throat rips with the moan, this hurts like a bitch and he wants it like he wants everything else he shouldn't - uncontrollably and deeply and damagingly. He's ready but he wasn't prepared, and Dean's too much to handle, so much horsepower Sam can't lay it all down in time to get traction, and they buck together, standing start into this doomed quarter mile, all cylinders firing, Dean balls-deep and Sam finding space inside himself for his brother he didn't know he still had. 'Missed you too,' he rasps. 'I know you were out there, you jerk. Why didn't you -'

'Sammy, please.' Dean lays his dirty-wet hand down over the back of the seat for leverage, like he's gonna pound Sam's ass into next week, but he rolls his hips slow and dragging, and his other hand touches Sam on the jaw, makes him look up where he was panting down at where they're joined. 'Sam,' Dean says, raw and sore and aching. 'God. I always - I never -'

Sam reaches up and pulls him down and kisses him then because he doesn't want confessions. He doesn't wanna know. What happens on the road is supposed to stay on the road.

Sam would swear Dean has more callouses now than he did before, that his hands are rougher on Sam's skin. Sam feels every touch like it burns, and pushes into it. Dean's mouth is slick, he kisses like Sam's the only thing in the universe he can survive on, and if there was gonna be any talking it gets lost like that between their skin. Dean's fixated on Sam's lower lip, pulls at it, mouths at the corners of his smile, and Sam just wants to taste him from the inside, but the way Dean controls this kiss melts Sam's bones from the side. He'll take what he can get and like it, wedged open by his brother in so many ways.

The suspension squeaks as they rock. Sam's ass slides against the seat, Dean's knees up under his thighs, barely any space, barely anywhere to go except into each other, and in, and in, and in every time Dean pushes Sam gives, Sam pushes back and Dean takes it, screws in deeper, hot and spot-welded to each other. Dean's hand comes off Sam's jaw and wraps around his dick instead, his teeth pull at Sam's lower lip _again_ and Sam's already liquid and hot and ready for the boiling point when Dean murmurs, 'c'mon, Sammy.'

Sam's never been obedient but the feeling rolls over hm like a pressure wave as soon as Dean says it,, he can't breathe, he can't think, he just burns and jerks and tightens and realise that this was always where they were headed, this is where their highway goes. 'Dean,' Sam gasps, fire behind his eyes and smoke in his throat. 'Oh, God, Dean, _Dean_ -' the only name he knows.

He makes a mess of himself, slick and sloppy over his wrecked t-shirt, and Dean gasps and flings his head up like he's seeing stars through the felt on the Impala's ceiling. Sam can feel Dean let it go inside him, burning and jerking and so wet, so, so wet inside him because they forgot the condom this time, they forgot they needed a barrier. And just for a moment, with Dean in his arms and up inside him and their heartbeats in sync, Sam thinks _yeah, that's right._

It's only when Dean pulls away that Sam feels the mess for real. 

***

'Maybe I can meet up with you later,' says Sam, and maybe he means it and more likely he doesn't, but just that he says it is a start, y'know. And Dean's got no right, no right at all, but he can't just let Sam walk away without trying one more time. 'Y'know, we made a hell of a team back there.'

He knows it, and he knows Sam knows it. And Sam does something that's close to smiling, and says 'yeah,' but he still walks away. Hopefully he's got a good story about the state of his clothes and the state of himself in general. Dean's hands are marked in already-fading red on Sam's skin, his shirt's torn, and he's walking kind of funny. Dean doesn't know how Sam's gonna explain it. He doesn't know how to explain it himself. It's wrong. He has no excuses. And he'd do it again, there's no point lying about it. He'd do it all again. He'd impersonate a Federal officer, spend defrauded money, break out of jail, threaten civilians, tell lies, fuck his brother in his car … he's done it all before and he'll do it all again. 

Dean has no illusions. He does things that are illegal, but only because they're the right things to do.

He watches Sam walk back into the apartment, watches his too-tall shadow cross lit windows, into the bedroom, and nods to himself and tries to smile, and almost drives away, Blackwater Ridge already settled on as his next destination. But … something's not right. Just like Dad not calling, it's not right even if Dean couldn't tell you why. He just knows.

That light's too warm, maybe, flickers too much even for shitty fluorescent bulbs, isn't quite the right shade of yellow - 

He's moving almost before he smells the fire. It's instinct. Something's wrong - find Sammy.

Sam's not even trying to save himself, he's staring, he's a dead weight and he's in shock and Dean has to dig deep and find strength he didn't know he had just to drag his baby brother out of the burning building. Again. He has to keep hold while Sam fights him, fights to be allowed back in there, and he clings while Sam rages and cries, and it doesn't do a lick of good. The firefighters barely find enough left of Jess to call it a body, and Dean can't force Sam to look away when the gurney comes out.

After Constance and all her unfaithful victims this just feels like a slap in the fucking face. 

***

They put the building out eventually. Dean lets Sam go, eventually, when Sam's cried himself out and fought himself to a standstill and there's no more fire to run into, nothing left to save. Sam stinks of burning building and worse things, like blood and come and guilt. It's Monday morning. He's home. He got what he asked for, but he'll be damned before he lets this destroy him. He knows what he has to do now.

This isn't gonna be a fairytale. They've got work to do.


End file.
